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World

Forging A Jewish Future

Shaarey Zedek strives to engage young adult leaders.

Lisa Naftaly Brown
Special to the Jewish News

New York City

W

hat do you get when
you take a group of
bright, successful,
busy young Jews with varying
degrees of Jewish involvement,
gather them together for two
days on a whirlwind trip around
Jewish New York and promise
them future opportunities for
learning and leadership?
Rabbi Joseph Krakoff, head
rabbi of Congregation Shaarey
Zedek (CSZ) in Southfield, is
betting on this result: a cohesive,
committed and more Jewishly
educated group of future congre-
gational leaders.
"It's important to us as a
synagogue for you, as up-and-
coming leaders, to know what
Conservative Judaism stands for
and to realize that a multitude
of opportunities exist for you at
Shaarey Zedek," Rabbi Krakoff
told the group of 21 young
adults hand-picked for CSZ's
new Young Leadership Initiative
(YLI) as they headed for New
York City's Lower East Side this
past summer to retrace the steps
of their ancestors.
The trip, the first among
planned learning, advocacy
and leadership opportunities at
CSZ for emerging leaders, was
intended "to be the basis of what
it means to be a Conservative
Jew; to find out what others are
doing that's working and to take
back what we can and integrate
it," said Rabbi Krakoff.
Participants ranged in level
of communal involvement
from those like Faya Gene of
Birmingham, a recent graduate
in her mid-20s who described
herself as "just starting my
community involvement" to
more seasoned lay leaders, like
Joel Jacob, who was featured
in a 2006 issue of the Jewish
News for his national lead-

Front row: Ellen Kerschenbaum, Faya Gene, Missy Handler, Valerie Hayman Sklar, Pamela Applebaum,
Susan Krakoff, Tobye Bello, Lisa Brown, Casey Long

Back row: Rebecca Hayman, Andrew Hayman, Rabbi Joseph Krakoff, Rob Bloomberg, Jordan Glass,

Stuart Dorf, David Einstandig, Samera Long, Tom Wexelberg-Clouser, Jon Dwoskin, Jon Abrahams, Kim
Broner, Joel Jacob

ership on hunger, among other
causes.
While all of the members
selected for the program are
"driven to do something, the
glue is your faith:' Rabbi Krakoff
told the group. "Judaism is what
ties all of your ideas and involve-
ment, your work and social eth-
ics.

Ancestors' Footsteps
The first stop in New York was
Gertel's Bakery, one of the few
remaining Jewish businesses in
the area. One whiff of freshly
baked kaiser rolls and rows upon
rows of rugelach and sprinkle
cookies quickly transported
participants back in time — to
their childhoods, if not the early
1900s.
Gertel's stands on Hester
Street, once the hub of Jewish
commerce, where hundreds of
push carts once lined the avenue.
Home to about 300,000 newly
arrived Eastern European Jews at
the turn of the 20th century, the
Lower East Side now only hints
at its Jewish inhabitants, with

the occasional Hebrew-lettered
sign sprinkled amidst a sea of
Chinese-lettered ones.
As they walked the tene-
ment-lined streets, participants
learned that two-thirds of New
York City's residents lived in
tenements in 1900, with 16
families of about eight people
each, including boarders, or over
100 people, squeezed into 300:
square-foot apartments. A build-
ing comprised four floors and a
bottom-level store.
Living conditions were
"unfathomable," according to the
tour guide, "with litter and horse
manure lining the streets and
diseases running - rampant from
poor water quality, crowded liv-
ing conditions and lack of mod-
ern medicines!'
Rebecca Hayman of West
Bloomfield, whose father and
grandfather lived in one such
tenement at 500 Grand Avenue,
found this particularly fascinat-
ing. "My father would go out on
the fire escape stairs to study in
solitude. Seeing the area first-
hand made his stories come to

Participants also toured two of
the country's oldest synagogues,
the Eldridge Street Synagogue
and Congregation Shearith
Israel, where they learned about
the religious life of America's
early Jews and how they juggled
assimilation and a respect for
traditional Jewish practices and
ideology
Later in the day, CSZ YLI
participants got a chance to
re-enact immigrant life at the
Tenement House Museum, where
an actress playing the part of
a Jewish immigrant welcomed
them as "newly arrived immi-
grants" into "her home!'
Her "home" was a preserved
tenement, complete with arti-
facts of early 20th century life,
including a washing board,
heavy metal clothes iron and a
coal stove, as well as timeless
Judaica, such as Shabbat candle-
sticks and a Havdalah box.
For many, like David
Einstandig of West Bloomfield,
"the tour of the Lower East Side,
the Eldridge Street synagogue

and the Tenement Museum
provided me with a glimpse of
real life; the sight, feel and touch
(and luckily not smell) of the
immigrant and integration expe-
rience. Like a visit to Israel, you
have to have been there to truly
understand [it]!"
Samara Long of Commerce
Township was similarly moved
by the hands-on experience. "As
a child, my parents and grand-
parents would tell me stories of
their living conditions earlier
in their lives in New York City.
So, to sit in a building similar
to theirs was very meaningful.
It helped me to connect to per-
sonal family history as well as
greater Jewish family history"
For Samara's husband, Casey
Long, the experience at the
Eldridge Street Synagogue,
which was built in the 1880s by
some of the Jewish community's
key leaders and which flour-
ished and then fell into decline,
"caused me to think about what
we, as the next generation of
Jewish leaders, will need to do to
ensure the strength of our com-
munity."
This was the intended effect
of the first day, according to
CSZ Program Director Tobye
Bello, who helped organize the
trip. "As leaders, you have to
know where you've been to know
where you're going."
On the second day, YLI mem-
bers toured soup kitchens and
heard about key models for
service delivery and advocacy
for the hungry from one of the
nation's leading hunger advo-
cates, Joel Berg.
Participants then visited the
Jewish Theological Seminary,
where they learned more
about what it means to be
a Conservative Jew. As Tom
Wexelberg-Clouser of Detroit
JTS put it, "Conservative Judaism
takes the best of Judaism and
the best of modernity. You can be

Forging on page 22

November 23 • 2006

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